Hydraulic food cutting apparatus' have been known and used commercially for over thirty years. Their general principles of operation are well known. Food pieces that are to be cut or processed are dropped into a feed tank containing water. The water, with the entrained food pieces, is then pumped into a pipe and into the front half of a venturi where the potatoes are accelerated to velocities of approximately forty to sixty feet per second. At the narrowest point of the venturi, a fixed array of cutting blades are positioned, and as the food product impinges upon the blade, this food is cut into a plurality of smaller pieces. For example, French fry pieces are many times cut from whole potatoes utilizing such a process and device. After the pieces have been cut from the blade, the food pieces enter the second half of the venturi where they are decelerated and deposited upon a conveyor of some sort where the cut food pieces are separated from the water. The water is then recycled back to the feed tank for further use. The cut food pieces are then conveyed on for further processing as may be appropriate.
While the concept is simple, its execution in practice is far more difficult. The commercial value of the cut food pieces is dependent upon the quality of the cuts. Broken or irregular cut food pieces have less commercial value and as a result, continuous work has been done over the years to improve the quality of the cut food pieces coming out of a hydraulic cutter. Hydraulic food cutting devices are high capacity cutting machines and are not labor intensive, usually only requiring one operator to monitor hydraulic cutter operation. Thus if properly arranged and assembled they can be significantly efficient and an effective way to produce food products.
While there are a wide variety of food products that are cut using hydraulic food cutters, these types of devices are predominantly used for cutting potatoes and other types of food that are generally uniform throughout. Other types of foods, including foods that have a core or a stem have typically not been successfully processed in such a device. In addition, the configuration of the blades in most of these devices together with the forces utilized in processing these materials have typically rendered such devices unacceptable for use in devices for activities such as coring, and slicing food products such as peppers.
Peppers, more particularly bell peppers, of whatever color, red, green or yellow, jalapeno peppers, and pimento peppers have always been deemed to be difficult to commercially process. The primary problem exists in finding an efficient and rapid way to remove the pepper core, consisting of the stem end, seed pod and seeds, hereinafter collectively referred to as the core, from the remaining portions of the pepper without obliterating or breaking the device into small pieces. There are several methods that have been developed to core these peppers.
The first method involves the use of some sort of a single blade rotating coring knife, over which the pepper is positioned, stem down, so that the coring knife can bore in cutting out the core and the seed pod. The second method is in more common use today, particularly where there is no need to retain the original configuration of the pepper as a unitary piece. This method involves crushing the peppers and then hand sorting out either the broken usable pieces, or the opposite, hand separating the remains of the cores. The broken pieces are then washed and usually conveyed on for further processing, such as dicing, for inclusion in prepared food products whether canned, frozen, freeze dried or whatever.
A common characteristic to peppers which enables the crushing process to be used, is the fact that the wall of the pepper is brittle enough in its cellular composition that it will break after some initial plastic deformation, if enough force is impacted against the wall of the pepper.
These two prior art methods and processes for coring peppers can generally be described as mechanical approaches, since they both involve the use of mechanical machines to either crush the peppers or to bore out the stem and core.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,390,590 to Mendenhall describes a method and device for separating cores and seeds from peppers utilizing a hydrocutting apparatus. This device utilizes a squeeze type of chamber to receive items such as peppers and to squeeze the core and seeds out of them and break them into pieces so that they can later be separated. This device however does not allow for the peppers to be cored and sliced, which is a desired form that many parties wish to purchase. The Mendenhall device simply breaks the whole pepper into pieces. There is no device, which is known to the Applicant that allows food products such as peppers to be cored and sliced in a hydrocutting apparatus. The use of a hydrocutting apparatus is significantly more cost effective and efficient as compared to other types of devices and methods that may be utilized to perform such a function.
Accordingly it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and device which can be utilized to core and slice food products such as peppers in such a way so as to cause the general shape and integrity of the food product to be maintained and to do so utilizing a device such as a hydrocutting device which provides significant advantages and efficiencies as compared to other types of devices which exist in the prior art.
Additional objects, advantages and novel features of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and in part will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon examination of the following or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and attained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.